Alistair MacLeod

Not to be confused with Alastair McLeod, Australian based celebrity chef.

Alistair MacLeod, OC (born July 20, 1936 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan) is a noted Canadian author and retired professor of English at the University of Windsor.

Academic career

When MacLeod was ten his family moved to a farm in Dunvegan, Inverness County on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island. After completing high school, MacLeod attended the Nova Scotia Teachers College and then taught public school. He studied at St. Francis Xavier University between 1957 and 1960 and graduated with a BA and BEd. He then went on to receive his MA in 1961 from the University of New Brunswick and his PhD in 1968 from the University of Notre Dame. A specialist in British literature of the nineteenth century, MacLeod taught English for three years at Indiana University before accepting a post in 1969 at the University of Windsor as professor of English and creative writing. During the summer, his family resides near Inverness on Cape Breton Island, where he spends part of his time "writing in a cliff-top cabin looking west towards Prince Edward Island."

Published works

MacLeod's published works include the 1976 short story collection The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and the 1986 As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories. All of the stories in these two volumes along with his other published stories are included in MacLeod's 2000 collection Island. Among other awards, Macleod won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his 1999 novel No Great Mischief.

On December 4, 2009, MacLeod received the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction along with Amy Hempel.

Family

His son Alexander MacLeod is also a writer, whose debut short story collection Light Lifting was a Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist in 2010.

External links

• Alistair MacLeod's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
• Author Interview Robert Jarovi. (Downloadable Word file)
• Alistair MacLeod reading from No Great Mischief on Live from Prairie Lights. (RealPlayer streaming media.)
• Reading Alistair MacLeod at NFB.ca.
• Alistair MacLeod at the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award